Error installing on RHEL 8x and 9x

[rgraham7503]

Pre-requisities

• [ YES ] I am using the newest version of the platform (agentstack version shows that CLI and platform are the same version, and there is no newer version available)

Describe the bug
I am trying to run this command sh -c "$(curl -LsSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/i-am-bee/agentstack/release/install.sh)"

and I get the following output. I have tried this on multiple RHEL OS's with the same result. I have also tried manually installing QEMU and manually running the installer with other issues.

Starting the Agent Stack installer...
Installing uv...
Installing Python...
Removing old versions...
Installing Agent Stack CLI...
Installing QEMU with dnf [ERROR]
❗ WARNING: Failed to install QEMU automatically. Please install QEMU manually before using Agent Stack. Refer to
https://www.qemu.org/download/ for instructions.

✅ SUCCESS: Installation complete!
💡 HINT: Start the Agent Stack platform using: agentstack platform start
💡 HINT: Configure your LLM provider using: agentstack model setup
💡 HINT: Use agentstack ui to open the web GUI, or agentstack run chat to talk to an agent on the command line.
💡 HINT: Run agentstack --help to learn about available commands, or check the documentation at
https://agentstack.beeai.dev/

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Use a fresh RHEL OS
   cat /etc/redhat-release
   Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 9.6 (Plow)
2. Run the command sh -c "$(curl -LsSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/i-am-bee/agentstack/release/install.sh)" as instructed here
   https://agentstack.beeai.dev/stable/introduction/quickstart
3. See the above error
4. Try even after QEMU is installed

Expected behavior
I expected the agentstack to be completely installed.

Logs / Screenshots / Code snippets
If agent is not working, please send output of the following commands:

agentstack list
# If some of the agents are in error state
agentstack logs <agent-id>
agentstack info <agent-id>

If applicable, add screenshots or code snippets to help explain your problem.

Set-up:

RHEL 8.7 and 9.6

Additional context
Tried on RHEL 8.7 and 9.6 - with and without QEMU installed, get same error.

[dosubot]

Hi @rgraham7503! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the agentstack team.

The installer script tries to install QEMU on RHEL using dnf install -y -q @virtualization, but this can fail if the virtualization group is missing, disabled, or if there are permission issues. If automatic installation fails, Agent Stack checks for the presence of an architecture-specific QEMU binary (like qemu-system-x86_64 for x86_64) in your PATH. If it can't find the binary, it will keep prompting for manual installation, even if QEMU is installed but not in the expected location or not linked correctly [installer script, CLI logic].

Manual QEMU installation steps for RHEL 8.7/9.6:

1. Enable the virtualization module if it's not already enabled:

   sudo dnf module install virt

2. Install QEMU and related tools:

   sudo dnf install qemu-kvm qemu-img libvirt virt-install bridge-utils

3. Verify QEMU is installed and in your PATH:

   which qemu-system-x86_64

   If this returns a path (like /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64), Agent Stack should detect QEMU.

4. If you installed QEMU manually and still see errors, try opening a new terminal and running:

   agentstack self install

   This will re-check for QEMU and complete setup.

If you still get the error, check that the binary matches your architecture (e.g., qemu-system-x86_64 for x86_64, qemu-system-aarch64 for ARM64) and is accessible in your PATH. There are no known issues or tickets addressing this in the repo, so these steps should resolve most cases [CLI QEMU detection].

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[rgraham7503]

I was finally able to get past this by creating a symlink after manually installing qemu
symlink:
sudo ln -s /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64
qemu-system-x86_64 --version
Now I ran into another issue...the instructions need to be updated to run the "one-line install" command as a NON-ROOT user, otherwise you get this error
level=fatal msg="must not run as the root user"

[dosubot]

Great job working around the QEMU detection issue with the symlink—this is a valid solution for RHEL systems.

You're absolutely right about the installer: neither the script nor the documentation currently instructs users to run the one-line install as a non-root user, and there's no warning about the fatal error if run as root. The CLI only escalates privileges for QEMU installation, not for the whole process, and the error message you saw isn't documented or surfaced in the main installer logic or docs, which is a gap in guidance for users source.

It would be helpful for the docs and installer messaging to explicitly state that the installer should be run as a non-root user and warn about this error. This would prevent confusion for future users. Thanks for flagging this—it's actionable feedback for improving the install experience.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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